They live, some 16 Mexican migrant workers, in the attic of a Chester County mushroom factory.

Amid the stench rising from fertile mushroom beds, they gather around a tiny television set and watch a Spanish channel in a darkened room lit mainly by light from the tube. So sparsely is the room furnished that some men sit on the floor.

In the next room, an old man tends the large pot of soup atop an old gas stove. And not far from him, separated by some blankets strung from a rope, three teen-age boys sit on a makeshift wooden bunk.

The boys, who say they are 19 but look more like 16, cannot speak English. They say, through an interpreter, that they went to fifth- grade in Mexico.

Once common in Pennsylvania's mushroom country, the hostel for migrant workers is one of the last vestiges of a caste system that is grudgingly being forced to change by Hispanic activists and union organizers.

"The state has clamped down on the growers," said Luis Tlaseca, a mushroom picker who led a successful battle to unionize one of the county's largest growers. "Most of the workers now live in town."

Tlaseca and other activists recently gave U.S. Rep. Paul McHale, D-15th District, a tour of mushroom farms around Kennett Square, a region that produces 75 percent of the nation's mushroom crop. McHale met the farm workers earlier this year at a service for the late Caesar Chavez in the Bethlehem Rose Garden and accepted an invitation to tour working sites at mushroom farms in Chester County.

McHale is considering co-sponsoring legislation, introduced by Rep. George Miller of California, that would make it illegal for growers to hire farm workers as independent contractors. Treating farm workers as independent contractors, rather than employees, allows growers to avoid Workers Compensation and workplace safety measures.

The Agricultural Worker Protection Reform Act would strength farm labor contractor requirements and hold employers responsible for abuses by crew leaders. It also requires growers to comply with all employment-related health and safety laws and protects the rights of farm workers who file complaints about mistreatment.

"This legislation will guarantee that migrant workers will not have to experience substandard quality of life," McHale told a group of activists gathered in a second-floor office in Kennett Square.

On a visit to a mushroom factory, where the tiny white plants are grown in climate-controlled rooms half the size of a football field, McHale inquired about workplace safety and living conditions.

Mushroom pickers told the Bethlehem congressman that farm workers are frequently injured by falls from the beds, which are stacked on top of one another. Pickers must straddle narrow cat walks in order to reach the upper beds, and often loose their balance.

The workers receive medical treatment, but sometimes are sent back to work with broken limbs, activists told McHale. They said it is next to impossible for farm workers to collect Workers Compensation.

Martha Gonzalez, 21, a Bryn Mawr College student, told McHale that farm workers often are subjected to verbal abuse by crew leaders and supervisors.

"The intimidation and verbal abuse they get by working is something we cannot show you," Gonzalez said. "But it happens."

Gonzalez, whose parents are migrant workers, said farm workers can be suspended for a week for simply picking the wrong size mushrooms. Farm workers, who must pick the mushroom and cut off its roots, are paid $1 to $1.25 a box. A fast worker can earn about $8 an hour.

In trying to pick quickly, farm workers told McHale, they often cut themselves with razor-sharp picking knives. One worker showed the congressman scars on his hands.

Farm workers say they have unionized Kaolin Mushroom Farms, one of the biggest growers. But the election, they say, is being contested by the company.

The Kaolin Workers Union struck the mushroom grower April 1, but returned to work a month later. Tlaseca, the leader of the strike, was not rehired. A 37-year-old father of three, he said he cannot find a job at a mushroom farm in the region.

"I've been blacklisted," said Tlaseca, who wore a button inscribed "Viva La Causa."